marian renta
bio
A bona fide Jill of all trades, she is driven by the need to invoke emotions in people and tell a story. Lauded for her passionate, soulful style of singing and clever songwriting, Marian Renta serves additionally as her own producer, and possesses a natural flair for making ear-catching, thought-provoking music with experimental fixings. Renta heavily incorporates her lifechanging experiences in relationships and complicated family dynamics into her lyrics and sound moods. This incorporation, coupled with her talent for creating intriguing melodies, is the essence of Marian Renta, and it is through this unique essence that she has drawn and resonated with an audience and continues on an upward trajectory.
"All I think of is music. All I care about is music. Since I was born, my life has been a long soundtrack, and its been my food and air. I'm constantly consumed with song ideas and ravaged by creative fevers. It's inconvenient, and it's the most fulfilling sense of purpose I'll ever know."
Those early days
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Marian Renta was brought up in Newport News suburbia by her father—a former disc jockey, in southeast Virginia where she received an extensive and nurtured education in music. She was formally trained as a pianist in middle school and classically trained as pianist and composer in high school during a time when post-grunge dominated the airwaves and the pop-hip-hop fusion was in its infancy. By ninth grade, she had gravitated towards her school’s music lab and began learning how to engineer audio and produce music. As a life-long poet up to that point, Marian began writing songs and producing demos, ultimately spreading them around circles of friends and other musicians and singers. One of these songs caught the attention of the school’s music lab director, and he would subsequently allot studio time for Marian to further her craft. Throughout high school, she was an active member of the school choir, the pianist and choir member of the Baptist church she attended, and pianist of the Woodside High School Jazz Ensemble.
The debut and subsequent hiatus
In 2004, Marian established a home recording studio and began uploading cover songs and original songs to social media platforms. She experimented with various genres such as reggae, blues, and electronica in those early days. In 2010, Marian began working on new material for a studio album and sought to create an R&B concept album with elements of soul and pop. Consisting of fourteen songs, the album was promoted with the digital release of two singles—"Leave You", released on May 22, 2011, and the second single, "Eye for an Eye", released on August 11, 2011. The debut effort One of a Kind was released digitally on November 15, 2011 under her independent label, Hail Stunna. Three years after the album's release, Marian went on hiatus to focus on her personal life and pursue an outside career. She used the time away from her music to strengthen her familial relationships and to nurse a bout of writer's block she experienced.
Return to music and Headfirst
In 2020, amid the chaos and bedlam, Marian was moved by a tidal wave of inspiration for songwriting. By way of a series of social and personal experiences, she began working on material for a new recording project. She drew inspiration from sounds and themes explored by new-age German bands like Enigma and Tangerine Dream, and sought to incorporate a soulful, indie pop sound into these themes to create a fresh start to her sound. She abandoned the formulaic R&B style of song and birthed a stripped down, bare bones, dreamlike, expressive signature genre. At the turn of that year, she ultimately released her first extended play (EP) Headfirst on January 13, 2021, reinvigorating her music career and reestablishing her presence in the music industry. Released independently under her new label Marian Renta Co., Headfirst spawned a music video for the EP's title-track and garnered positive reception from general audiences for its lyrical depth and powerful vocal performance. Trending upward, she would continue to release a string of EPs and singles, including Great Deep and Candy-coated Pill, and a chain of crossover singles that have been met with positive reception.
Her ballads like "May" and "Fragments" are forever cemented as gems in her body of work, oozing the singer-songwriter pain that assaults the heart, and inevitably landing on various Spotify editorial playlists. As all trailblazing artists do, she's evolving, expanding, and rising to the challenge of not only competing with, but carving out her own unique platform in the independent music arena. Her first single of 2023 "Fangs" took the lead in her evolution from melancholy grays to a colorful, bright, energetic soundscape that bursts with nostalgia and love. Following up with "Serious", she sprinkled her sound with trap-EDM, and thinly glazed it with UK R&B to make a place for the song's unique electronic arrangements and soulful vocals. "Domingo" serves a tantalizingly ambient moment of sub-depression, and the grungy "Lovely Life" teaches us that God really is close to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. As seasons and trends in pop continue to change, Marian Renta maintains a perspective and creative identity that is evergreen and authentic.